Modeling Viral Evolutionary Dynamics after Telaprevir-Based Treatment

For patients infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV), the combination of the direct-acting antiviral agent telaprevir, pegylated-interferon alfa (Peg-IFN), and ribavirin (RBV) significantly increases the chances of sustained virologic response (SVR) over treatment with Peg-IFN and RBV alone. If patients do not achieve SVR with telaprevir-based treatment, their viral population is often significantly enriched with telaprevir-resistant variants at the end of treatment. We sought to quantify the evolutionary dynamics of these post-treatment resistant variant populations. Previous estimates of these dynamics were limited by analyzing only population sequence data (20% sensitivity, qualitative resistance information) from 388 patients enrolled in Phase 3 clinical studies. Here we add clonal sequence analysis (5% sensitivity, quantitative) for a subset of these patients. We developed a computational model which integrates both the qualitative and quantitative sequence data, and which forms a framework for future analyses of drug resistance. The model was qualified by showing that deep-sequence data (1% sensitivity) from a subset of these patients are consistent with model predictions. When determining the median time for viral populations to revert to 20% resistance in these patients, the model predicts 8.3 (95% CI: 7.6, 8.4) months versus 10.7 (9.9, 12.8) months estimated using solely population sequence data for genotype 1a, and 1.0 (0.0, 1.4) months versus 0.9 (0.0, 2.7) months for genotype 1b. For each individual patient, the time to revert to 20% resistance predicted by the model was typically comparable to or faster than that estimated using solely population sequence data. Furthermore, the model predicts a median of 11.0 and 2.1 months after treatment failure for viral populations to revert to 99% wild-type in patients with HCV genotypes 1a or 1b, respectively. Our modeling approach provides a framework for projecting accurate, quantitative assessment of HCV resistance dynamics from a data set consisting of largely qualitative information.Author Summary: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) chronically infects approximately 170 million people worldwide. The goal of HCV treatment is viral eradication (sustained virologic response; SVR). Telaprevir directly inhibits viral replication by inhibiting the HCV protease, leading to high SVR rates when combined with pegylated-interferon alfa and ribavirin. Telaprevir-resistant variants may be detected in the subset of patients who do not achieve SVR with telaprevir. While the clinical impact of viral resistance is unknown, typically the telaprevir-sensitive virus re-emerges after the end of treatment due to competition between the telaprevir-sensitive and resistant variants. Previous estimates of these competition dynamics were obtained from population sequence data, which are qualitative and have a limited sensitivity of ∼20%. We sought to improve these estimates by combining these data with clonal sequence data, which are quantitative and have a sensitivity of ∼5%, and using quantitative modeling. The resulting model, which was verified with an independent data set, predicted that the median time for telaprevir-resistant variants to decline to less than 1% of the viral population was ≤1 year. Our modeling approach provides a framework for accurately projecting HCV resistance dynamics from a dataset consisting of largely qualitative information.